Israel abandons outposts near disputed Chebaa farms region

Published: Sunday, May 28, 2000

CHEBAA, Lebanon {AP} In a move likely to help defuse tension in a disputed area, Israeli forces have pulled out of two outposts at the Lebanese-Israeli frontier as U.N. teams prepared to finalize the border between the nations, U.N. sources said Saturday.

Elsewhere on the border Saturday, U.N. peacekeepers deployed at a fence where Lebanese have been throwing stones and firebombs at Israeli soldiers on the other side.

Ten blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers kept Lebanese about 25 yards away from Israeli soldiers on the other side of the fence to prevent friction. Israeli soldiers also kept people away from their side of the barrier.

After the peacekeepers left, however, some Lebanese civilians tried to climb the fence into Israeli territory and Israeli soldiers fired warning shots in the air, an army statement said.

Since the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon on Wednesday, civilians and armed guerrillas have been converging on the new border. Some came out of curiosity to peek at Israel, which most Lebanese have never seen, but others vented their anger, shouting insults and throwing firebombs, stones, glass bottles and fruit at Israeli soldiers.

In the disputed Chebaa area, U.N. peacekeepers positioned more than a half-mile across a valley from the three Israeli outposts said two of the positions were abandoned Friday night.

In Israel, the army denied reports of troop activity in the area. But town residents and U.N. peacekeepers at a nearby post heard explosions. Lebanese security officials suspected but could not confirm the detonations were to demolish the abandoned positions.

It was not yet clear whether the newly abandoned outposts are part of the nearby disputed Chebaa farms. Israel captured the strip of land from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war but Lebanon claims it as its own, a position supported by Damascus. By evacuating the outposts in the Chebaa area, Israel defuses an excuse for Hezbollah guerrilla attacks from Lebanon.

Hezbollah guerrilla leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah on Friday urged Israel to withdraw from the Chebaa farms but did not say whether Hezbollah would follow through on its threat to attack Israel if the area was not returned.

U.N. envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said in Beirut on Friday that the United Nations considers the Chebaa farms Syrian, meaning Israel's presence there would not impede a formal U.N. confirmation of the Israeli withdrawal.

Ismail Sharifa, 43, a Chebaa native who owns land in town and on the farms, came from Tripoli in northern Lebanon on Saturday for the first time since 1981. He lost his land after Israeli troops occupied the area.

"I have a good life in Tripoli but once I get the land I want to live here. It's one of the most beautiful places in the world," Sharifa said. He said his family used to grow peanuts, wheat, barley, lentils, cucumbers and tomatoes on the land.

Also Saturday, people dropped by a few at a time at spots near the border, congratulating one another on the end of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon.

An Israeli military jeep drove slowly by on the other side of the fence, occasionally stopping.

U.N. teams will be in the area in a few days to mark the uncertain border line, after which the United Nations will work to officially confirm complete Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in accordance with a 1978 Security Council resolution.

U.N. spokesman Timur Goskel said the teams, led by sappers looking for mines, are checking the border line to make sure it complies with maps prior to the first Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978.